You may download the latest version of Apache either directly from the
Apache web site, at http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/,
or from one of the many mirror sites, listed at http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi.
These sites will list the current release, and more recent beta releases,
and have links to older versions, and binary distributions for a variety
of platforms.

Like all good things, there are two ways to configure, compile, and
install Apache. You can go for the 3-minute installation process using
the APACI process described below; or, you can opt for the same mechanism
used in previous versions of Apache, as described in the file
'src/INSTALL'. Each mechanism has its benefits and drawbacks - APACI is
newer and a little more raw, but it gets you up and running the least
amount of time, whereas the "Configuration.tmpl" mechanism may be more
familiar and give you some more flexibility to the power user. We'd be
very interested in your comments and feedback regarding each
approach.

Make sure you have approximately 12 MB of temporary free disk space
available. After installation Apache occupies approximately 3 MB of
disk space (the actual required disk space depends on the amount of
compiled in third party modules, etc).

ANSI-C Compiler:

Make sure you have an ANSI-C compiler installed. The GNU C compiler
(GCC) from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is recommended (version
2.7.2 is fine). If you don't have GCC then at least make sure your
vendors compiler is ANSI compliant. You can find the homepage of GNU at
http://www.gnu.org/ and the GCC distribution under
http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html .

Perl 5 Interpreter [OPTIONAL]:

For some of the support scripts like `apxs' or `dbmmanage' (which
are written in Perl) the Perl 5 interpreter is required (versions 5.003
and 5.004 are fine). If no such interpreter is found by APACI's
`configure' script this is no harm. Of course, you still can build and
install Apache 1.3. Only those support scripts cannot be used. If you
have multiple Perl interpreters installed (perhaps a Perl 4 from the
vendor and a Perl 5 from your own), then it is recommended to use the
--with-perl option (see below) to make sure the correct one is selected
by APACI.

Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) support [OPTIONAL]:

To provide maximum flexibility Apache now is able to load modules
under runtime via the DSO mechanism by using the pragmatic
dlopen()/dlsym() system calls. These system calls are not available
under all operating systems therefore you cannot use the DSO
mechanism on all platforms. And Apache currently has only limited
built-in knowledge on how to compile shared objects because this is
heavily platform-dependent. The current state is this:

Out-of-the-box supported platforms are:

Linux

SunOS

UnixWare

Darwin/Mac OS

FreeBSD

Solaris

AIX

OpenStep/Mach

OpenBSD

IRIX

SCO

DYNIX/ptx

NetBSD

HPUX

ReliantUNIX

BSDI

Digital Unix

DGUX

Entirely unsupported platforms are:

Ultrix

If your system is not on these lists but has the dlopen-style
interface, you either have to provide the appropriate compiler and
linker flags (see CFLAGS_SHLIB, LDFLAGS_SHLIB and
LDFLAGS_SHLIB_EXPORT below) manually or at least make sure a Perl 5
interpreter is installed from which Apache can guess the options.

For more in-depth information about DSO support in Apache 1.3
please read the document htdocs/manual/dso.html carefully. Especially
the section entitled "Advantages & Disadvantages" because using
the DSO mechanism can have strange side-effects if you are not
carefully. BE WARNED!

The next step is to configure the Apache source tree for your
particular platform and personal requirements. The most important setup
here is the location prefix where Apache is to be installed later,
because Apache has to be configured for this location to work correctly.
But there are a lot of other options available for your pleasure.

For a short impression of what possibilities you have, here is a
typical example which compiles Apache for the installation tree
/sw/pkg/apache with a particular compiler and flags plus the two
additional modules mod_rewrite and mod_proxy for later loading through
the DSO mechanism:

Before the advent of APACI, there was just one way to build and
install Apache. While APACI gave a configuration interface which is
more familiar to some people, the older method gives a way to
configure the installation without typing a large number of
command-line options.

Compiling Apache consists of three steps: Firstly select which
Apache modules you want to include into the
server. Secondly create a configuration for your operating
system. Thirdly compile the executable.

All configuration of Apache is performed in the
src directory of the Apache distribution. Change
into this directory.

Select modules to compile into Apache in the
Configuration file. Uncomment lines
corresponding to those optional modules you wish to include
(among the AddModule lines at the bottom of the file), or
add new lines corresponding to additional modules you have
downloaded or written. (See API.html for preliminary docs on
how to write Apache modules). Advanced users can comment
out some of the default modules if they are sure they will
not need them (be careful though, since many of the default
modules are vital for the correct operation and security of
the server).

You should also read the instructions in the
Configuration file to see if you need to set
any of the Rule lines.

Configure Apache for your operating system. Normally you
can just run the Configure script as given
below. However if this fails or you have any special
requirements (e.g., to include an additional
library required by an optional module) you might need to
edit one or more of the following options in the
Configuration file: EXTRA_CFLAGS, LIBS,
LDFLAGS, INCLUDES.

The modules we place in the Apache distribution are the ones we
have tested and are used regularly by various members of the
Apache development group. Additional modules contributed by
members or third parties with specific needs or functions are
available at <http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/contrib/modules/>.
There are instructions on that page for linking these modules
into the core Apache code.

You will have a binary file called httpd in the
src directory. A binary distribution of Apache
will supply this file.

The next step is to install the program and configure it.
Apache is designed to be configured and run from the same set
of directories where it is compiled. If you want to run it from
somewhere else, make a directory and copy the
conf, logs and icons
directories into it. In either case you should read the security tips
describing how to set the permissions on the server root
directory.

The next step is to edit the configuration files for the
server. This consists of setting up various
directives in up to three central
configuration files. By default, these files are located in the
conf directory and are called
srm.conf, access.conf and
httpd.conf. To help you get started there are same
files in the conf directory of the distribution,
called srm.conf-dist,
access.conf-dist and httpd.conf-dist.
Copy or rename these files to the names without the
-dist. Then edit each of the files. Read the
comments in each file carefully. Failure to setup these files
correctly could lead to your server not working or being
insecure. You should also have an additional file in the
conf directory called mime.types.
This file usually does not need editing.

First edit httpd.conf. This sets up general
attributes about the server: the port number, the user it runs
as, etc. Next edit the srm.conf file;
this sets up the root of the document tree, special functions
like server-parsed HTML or internal imagemap parsing,
etc. Finally, edit the access.conf file
to at least set the base cases of access.

In addition to these three files, the server behavior can be
configured on a directory-by-directory basis by using
.htaccess files in directories accessed by the
server.

Compiling Support Programs

In addition to the main httpd server which is
compiled and configured as above, Apache includes a number of
support programs. These are not compiled by default. The
support programs are in the support directory of
the distribution. To compile the support programs, change into
this directory and type

and then you should be able to request your first document via URL
http://localhost/ (when you built and installed Apache as root or at
least used the --without-confadjust option) or http://localhost:8080/
(when you built and installed Apache as a regular user). Then stop the
server again by running:

Proper operation of a public web server requires accurate time
keeping, since elements of the HTTP protocol are expressed as
the time of day. So, it's time to investigate setting up NTP or
some other time synchronization system on your Unix box, or
the net time command on NT.